Getting It Right

Another packed meeting yesterday at Inspire2Learn focussing on Early Years. It is striking that EYFS practitioners always turn up in their droves to share their experiences and ensure that they have the most up to date information about national expectations that they can get. Pauline as ever is pivotal to this as the relationship she has with the schools has developed a real community of practice ethos around her courses and in school support. Staff vote with their feet!

The EYFS is an ever changing landscape, was the theme of the update. Practitioners from 30 schools gathered to share experiences and responses to the latest developments in the world of the early years. To begin, we shared the HMCI document, ‘Getting it right first time.’ This document has had quite an impact on pre- reception provision and Ofsted judgements. There has been a shift in emphasis, by Ofsted, to nursery classes where evidence of high expectations and aspirations form a major part of the Ofsted judgement. Equally nursery assessment procedures are under scrutiny, especially the entry baseline which is increasing in importance. In the future all children will have their baseline score carried through school and referred to at all assessment points, in order to determine progress. The next document shared was the ‘Early Years Outcomes’ document produced by the DfE to replace the defunct ‘Development Matters. The National Figures for the EYFSP were shared next and schools were given a spreadsheet and a headline sheet to help with data analysis.

For the second part of the evening the focus moved to the updated Ofsted document. This update features several changes for EYFS including how children’s developmental levels should be described. During this session schools who had undergone a recent inspection shared their experiences, corroborating the earlier statements regarding the focus on the nursery class. In all cases inspectors spent a full day in the nursery class and interrogated the data fully.

At the end of the evening all schools were given access to al the documents through a shared share point site.